3 Quick Tips to Keep Your Players Motivated, Focused, and Working Hard!
This is an excerpt from our FREE report called The Ultimate Guide to Motivating Players. These are some good tips and reminders that will help you keep your players working hard...
Motivation Tip #1 - Do NOT Run at the End of Practice
If you save your conditioning for the very end of practice, many times kids don't play 100% throughout the body of practice because they know, "I'm gonna run 10, 15, 20 sprints at the end and I need to save myself for that."
If players know they have to run at the end of practice, they will pace themselves throughout your drills because they know RUNNING is coming.
Instead, you should include conditioning as part of your regular drills and practice. This way they go HARD the entire practice and it just becomes a habit.
Plus, running is not much fun for players and that's what they'll be talking about in the locker room. They'll be moaning and groaning about Coach making them run - or if it's a youth team, they're getting in the car with Mom and Dad talking negatively about practice.
You want your players to be excited about basketball and feel good about it. That's why it's so important to end on a positive note!
Now that I've had the opportunity to talk with countless successful coaches all over the country, I have discovered that almost all of them include conditioning as part of their regular drills. They run fast paced drills that both condition and improve skill at the same time. Not only does this save time and make your practice more efficient, but it improves motivation too. Players don't even know you're conditioning them.
Motivation Tip #2 - Be a Teacher
This is perhaps the most important and most powerful concept for you to embrace.
Coaching is teaching. What is the priority and overriding concern of a teacher? It's the progress of the student, not wins and losses.
This is a simple and profound concept that you need to embrace. When the coach treats the player as a student, players and the team show tremendous improvement.
The harsh reality is that players do in games exactly what they do in practice. Don't fool yourself. A remarkable pre-game speech isn't going to suddenly light a fire that lasts the entire game. This is not the answer.
The easiest way to motivate players is easy. Teach them. Players will respond if you teach them. And when they notice that they have improved, this will yield even more motivation.
John Wooden Food for Thought
This is from the book called The Talent Code. In 1974, two educational psychologists named Ron Gallimore and Roland Tharp studied John Wooden during every one of his practices throughout the season. They recorded each teaching act that Wooden instructed that year.
"There were 2,326 discrete acts of teaching. Of them, a mere 6.9 percent were compliments. Only 6.6 percent were expressions of displeasure. But 75 percent were pure information on what to do, how to do it, when to intensify an activity.
One of Wooden's most frequent forms of teaching was a 3-part method when he modeled the right way to do something, showed the incorrect way, and then remodeled the right way to do something. His actions rarely took longer than 3 seconds."
Motivation Tip #3 - Explain the Reason Why
A good teacher (and sales person for that matter) explains the "reason why". Many times coaches need to put their sales hat on (in addition to teaching) because you need to make sure players believe.
Quite often players don't understand why they are doing a certain drill, and frankly they lose motivation. They don't truly believe the drill is helping them.
This is why you need to explain the "reason why" the fundamentals and drills you run are important. Don't assume the players know, because I promise that they don't.
Explaining the "reason why" is a proven psychological trigger that causes people to take a desired action. At a psychological level, humans by nature want to know the reason why they are doing something.
Let's take man-to-man defense as an example...
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If your players don't understand the reason you want them to keep their knees bent, always be ready to help, see man and ball, and apply ball pressure, then they will NOT give 100%! If you want them to give 100%, you need to teach the reason why you're doing something. Teach them why you're quicker if you are in an athletic stance. Teach them why you're not supposed to leave your feet and get out of position. Teach them why they are sagging away from their man when they are one pass away or why they are in the passing lane denying the pass. The more your players understand the science behind your defense, the more they will buy into it and perform! |
This concept works. Don't slow you're practice to a halt. But work the explanations into certain places where players might not appreciate what you're doing. Give it a try.
What do you think? Let us know by leaving your
comments, suggestions, and questions...
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